From the category archives: #AsiaNow

The AAS has opened a search for its next Executive Director, who is expected to take up the position in early 2019. We request that all applicants submit their materials by April 25, 2018; full details are available here.
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Applications for the spring round of the AAS First Book Subvention Program are due by March 1. See here for application instructions.
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Apply by March 2 for the University of Michigan’s Medieval Komonjo Workshop 2018, on the theme of “Commoners and Authority in Medieval Japan.” The workshop (funded in part by an AAS Northeast Asia Council grant) will span one month (July 9-August 3) and include two sessions, with full financial support for housing costs available to those attending both sessions.
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Registration for the 2018 AAS-in-Asia conference in New Delhi is now open. Early bird prices are available only until February 28, 2018, so register now to secure your place at these special rates.
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Three regional AAS conferences are currently accepting propo ...

Sculpture by Cambodian artist Svay Sareth; photo courtesy of the artist. With the deadline for pre-registration for the annual AAS conference coming up on February 26, I would like to use this presidential column to share some information about art exhibits, five special #AsiaNow panels, and the conference as a whole. Gracing the atrium of the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel will be a special sculptural installation by Cambodian artist Svay Sareth, who was the 2016 recipient of the Overall Best Emerging Artist and Best Emerging Sculptor at the prestigious Prudential Eye Awards in Singapore. Illustrating the theme of “When East Meets West,” the artist plans to create a Khmer version of Donald Trump clad in camouflage fabric looking at himself in a bamboo mirror. Sareth will fabricate and sew all the pieces in his workshop in Cambodia and assemble them before our eyes in the atrium. This artwork ties in with a special #AsiaNow panel, entitled “Asian Arts and Resistance: Defiant Subjects and their ...

Congratulations to AAS Member Haun Saussy, University Professor of the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago, who has been awarded the 2018 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies by the Modern Language Association of America. Dr. Saussy received the honor for his recent book, The Ethnography of Rhythm: Orality and Its Technologies (Fordham University Press, 2016).
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We are pleased to share the news that the seven AAS Members below have received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of their work:
Ana Candela (SUNY Research Foundation, Binghamton), “A History of Chinese Settlers in Peru in the 19th and 20th Centuries”
Sakura Christmas (Bowdoin College), “Nomadic Borderlands: Imperial Japan and the Origins of Ethnic Autonomy in Modern China”
Sumit Guha (University of Texas, Austin), “The Political Ecology of Agrarian Empires in South Asia, c.1500–1900”
Marta Hanson (Johns Hopkins Un ...

Congratulations to former AAS President Theodore Bestor, Reischauer Institute Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University, who was recently awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, by the Japanese government. Bestor received the commendation for his “extensive contributions to the study of Japan and to the promotion of scholarly and educational exchange between Japan and the United States of America throughout his career.”
In a note of thanks to his colleagues, Bestor writes:
I have to remind friends (and myself) that whatever I have done—researched, taught, written about Japan as an anthropologist—has only been possible because of the kindness and patience of countless Japanese who have been willing to talk with an inquisitive stranger and to allow me to learn about their lives and communities (not to mention their food)!
I am grateful to the Japanese government for thi ...

Congratulations to the AAS Members whose books have been awarded prizes by other organizations:
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (University of Missouri), co-winner of the 2017 Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association Section on Comparative Democratization and co-winner of the 2017 Best Book Award from the International Studies Association for Dictators and Their Secret Police: Coercive Institutions and State Violence (Cambridge University Press)
Christopher Goscha (Univ. du Québec à Montréal), awarded the John K. Fairbank Prize from the American Historical Association for Vietnam: A New History (Basic Books, 2016)
Audrey Truschke (Rutgers University), awarded the John F. Richards Prize from the American Historical Association for Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (Columbia University Press, 2016)
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The Board of Directors of the Association for Asian Studies welcomes this opportunity to recognize KENNETH C. FROEWISS following his recent retirement a ...